Some Solanco High School pupils are flying high after earning awards in the Student Drone Challenge.

Robert Baxter finished first overall. Lucas Vilk was second among high school students, and Caleb Reed placed third in the high school contest. All three earned cash awards.

Participants were tasked with being a drone pilot for a reconnaissance team conducting a realistic mission identifying potential radiological threats, the entrant form said.

Students had to put together a 45-minute virtual presentation between March 20 and 26, 2025. Two of the goals were to learn how the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) might respond to a radiological threat and learn about the uses of UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) and the basics of how to conduct UAV operations.

"Weeks beforehand, they sent this link out and you can practice," Lucas said. "You can practice however many times you want and feel how the game works, because it's mostly a game. You spawn in with a drone, and you have to go around a map looking for tanks and you have to find different tanks with radiation on them. You know it has radiation when you have a little scale top left of your screen, and if it spikes, that means you're close to radiation. If not, you just got to keep on searching."

Lucas added, "There was a little bit of math involved. It wasn't as simple as just going around flying. You had to see how high (radiation levels had) spiked. You had to do a little bit of calculations, like averages and medians, simple stuff like that."

Robert compared the challenge to a video game. He scored a competition-best 99.97%. "I was like, 'Wow,'" Robert said. "I thought I was doing good, but I didn't know I did that good, that I would get first place. I thought there'd be other people that got 100%. I thought if I could get that close, then someone must have gotten 100%, but I guess they didn't."

Lucas was ecstatic to learn he and his friends had been successful. "I was more happy for Robert being No. 1, but I was pretty excited too," he said. "Robert helped me a lot with mine too. He did a lot ,and he gave me tips to help with it. We had a technique that we had to do every run. We did it so much that we found the right way to do it. We had a strategy for each time we did it through practice."

The competition was sponsored by the DTRA and Penn State University's Interaction of Ionizing Radiation with Matter (IIRM).

"This competition was a unique experience," Solanco High School business teacher Josh Fleming said. "I am incredibly thankful to Penn State and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency for giving high school students exposure to the kind of cutting-edge technology that will play a major role in our national security down the road."

Robert was grateful for assistance from his teacher. "Mr. Fleming gave us an idea of what to expect and how to work through it," he said. "Then we just did trial and error on our own, figuring out what worked best."

The competition could help them in the future. Lucas plans to attend Frederick Community College and study cybersecurity before moving on to a four-year school. "I guess (the competition) has a little bit to do with cybersecurity," he said. "We were doing it from a computer, but imagine what the military's doing. They could probably do it from a computer too. So cyber attacks could happen with drones, and in the future, I might need to stop that."

Robert will study computer engineering at York College of Pennsylvania. "(The contest) kind of relates because you can engineer the computers that go in the drones, but we didn't do anything like that in the competition," he said.

The students received a commendation from congressman Lloyd Smucker that was entered into the Congressional Record.

"I am so proud of my students for absolutely grinding," said Fleming. "I introduced the challenge, registered them, and gave basic instructions. Literally everything else was student-driven. They achieved a near-perfect score, and their effort was incredible. The positive community response, including recognition by Rep. Smucker, really justified the energy the students invested. I can't wait for the next competition."